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Alex,
You are welcome to contact me and learn more about the mentoring available (mine and others' ) in the market. That said, it is my STRONG belief that if you are looking for free mentoring you be VERY careful about who you accept help from.
Almost all investors share a personality type that wants to get "a good deal." This is a polite way of saying "I want it as close to free as I can get." Usually in this business that's fine - BUT NOT WHERE EDUCATION IS CONCERNED. The problem with free advice is usually that it is a) worth what you pay for it and b)comes with ulterior motives that c) many times do not have YOUR best interests at heart.
Based on experience, what I have seen work best long-term for newer investors, is to use a paid mentor, but only under specific circumstances and for highly defined times and results.
Let's start with some simple DOs and DON'Ts.
- Don't signup with mentors who make all / a significant portion of their income from ... mentoring. Instead, seek out someone who does:
- What you want to learn to do - You want to learn wholesaling from a wholesaler, rehabbing from a rehabber, etc.
- The way you want to learn to do it - i.e. full-time, part-time, remotely, with a lot of money, with no money, etc.
- and IN THE MICRO-MARKET YOU WANT TO DO IT - investing in Waco is slightly different than investing in Fort Worth, which are both vastly different than investing in beach property in Miami.
- Don't signup with mentors who require long-term agreements / contracts. I STRONGLY suggest you hire a mentor to teach you a single skill, in a designated time, and for a predetermined price. A good way to accomplish this is to say something like "I'll pay you X as soon as you help me do Y." Most mentors make their living by creating income streams from new investors. The idea for professional mentors is to get as many investors signed up to pay $1,000 / mo. for 12 - 36 months. The more menthes, the greater the cash-flow for the mentor each month.
- Don't sign up with mentors who sub-out their mentoring. I don't know a single national-level guru who does not offer mentoring as the primary focus of all their sales and marketing efforts. Of the ones I know (and I know MANY) only a tiny fraction actually do their own mentoring. Most find local "expert investors" (someone who's done at least two deals) and pay them a portion of the receivables from the mentees the mentor signs up. Or worse, many times a mentor cannot find a local investor to partner with, so they will use a salaried employee from another market. I can't tell you how many times I've listened in on my students' calls with mentors from other parts of the country who were giving my students career-ending advice. What works in Florida or California probably won't work here, and even if it did it is either illegal, or so highly regulated against by the State legislature as to effectively be illegal.
- Do make sure you are using a mentor wisely. Basically, there are only a few times when an investor actually needs a mentor. The first, is when the investor is brand new. The idea here is that an investor has a need to shorten and flatten the initial learning curve. However, for the vast majority of new investors, a better recommendation is to attend several reputible investment clubs regularly. Greg Wilson and Robin Carriger's DFW Real Estate Investor's club meets every Saturday. John Zarrella and Jimmy Reed's FW-REIO club meets ever second Thursday. Dennis Henson's AREA and HEB clubs meet once a month. And there are dozens of others. Go to them (LEAVE YOUR CHECKBOOK AND EGO AT HOME), tell everyone you are brand new AND BROKE (even if you have $1M in cash under your mattress), and then see who wants to help you out of the goodness of their hearts.
- But be careful who you listen to. When you are brand new, you don't know what you don't know. Worse, you don't know what the "expert" sitting next to you giving free advice doesn't know. They may THINK they are giving you good advice, when many time what they are telling you is incomplete, or just flat out wrong.
- DO NOT offer to trade your time for teaching. One of the dirty little secrets in the real estate investment club business is that there is a never ending supply of "newbies" who are initially fanatically eager / motivated, but who all disappear within 90 - 180 days. "Old Timers," folks who tend to run clubs or do a significant # of transactions know this. They also know they have almost NO free time to teach the thousands of newbies who approach them with "I'll be your slave if you teach me how to do X." I've seen many Old Timers accept new "apprentices" into their "program" and then use them for the lowest, dirtiest, nastiest, most time consuming jobs, with little or no training being given in return, b/c the Old Timers know that the newly will be gone in a week / month or two, so why should I waste a lot of time and effort training them.
- Don't partner with anyone who NEEDS your money. This is really common with rehabbers. The basic sales pitch to newbies is "You put up the money, I'll do everything else and teach you how to be a rehabber in the process, and we'll split the profits." Instead, ask them "If you are so good as a rehabber that you are going to teach me how to do it, why do you needy money?"
- And finally, don't pay someone for the privilege of working for them. Again, I see throngs of gurus come blowing thru town offering "Come to my expensive boot camp and I'll teach you how to be my birddog. Then, if you graduate (meaning you check clears) I'll partner with you on deals that you bring to me." Meaning you pay me to teach you how to prospect, which the guru makes a profit on. Then you spend your time effort and money to go search for deals. IF you manage to find one, you call the guru and he'll put up the money to buy it (usually leveraging some / all of your money / credit). You then do all the work, including selling the house, then y'all split the proceeds, usually with the guru keeping the bulk of the profits.
These are just a few of the things you should look for / look out for when seeking a mentor. If you have more questions you can post them here, or email me from my site, which is http://www.reimentor.com.
-Greg Greg Wilson The REI Mentor |
